


Five per cent

by Matilde



Category: Hospice (album)
Genre: Angst, Cancer, Death, Gen, Hospital, POV First Person, Stream of Consciousness, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-10
Updated: 2010-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-13 14:43:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matilde/pseuds/Matilde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I only talk to you when you're not listening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five per cent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cherryvanilla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryvanilla/gifts).



> Just a wee stream-of-consciousness(ish) ficlet inspired by the narrative in Hospice. Kind of pointless, perhaps, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. Happy Yuletide!

Have you been sick your whole life? Do you remember what the absence of pain felt like? When you could forget your body, when you were allowed to be cold, to walk in the snow until your socks were wet, when it wasn’t death to open a window or kiss someone you loved? When you had an immune system that spared you such absurd terrors?

Have you known those days? Were they really yours? Do you still own them? Do you still keep them, somewhere?

I want to buy you the thickest, warmest of scarves so you can bury your chin and your mouth in the wool. I want to take you outside. I want to take you into a forest, by a lake maybe, somewhere with pine needles snapping under your feet. I want you to hear the blackbird’s alarm cry, when it sees a predator and flies off in a panic (I’m sure you’d find it funny. Blackbirds are such drama queens). I want you to remember the difference between the frozen winter breeze and the relief of indoor heat.

I want to use ordinary words. I can’t talk to you like this – not when you’re awake, not when you can hear me. It doesn’t seem appropriate. In the cancer ward there’s a space for children, a rec room with some books. I picked one up the other day. The sentences were so simple. Their meaning, also. So simple and direct, so plain. _Come into my home_ , a character said; _You are my home_ , the other replied. It was a book about love. All kinds of it. Any. This is what I want for you : simplicity, and love. _My_ love.

But it always has to be about nightmares, about screams, about the pain devouring, devouring, and you don’t know how it will end. There always has to be anger, and a conflict. You won’t be soothed. You refuse it. Softness. You don’t want my ordinary words. You don’t want any words from me. My words are insults. My gestures are attacks.

I don’t blame you.

It’s just that there’s so much I want to give to you.

There are things I can do, though. Some. Tiny things, ridiculous – things I do because I must, because it’s my job (that’s also why you let me). Your lips are always dry, in spite of all the fluids we pump into your veins, and several times a day I put some cream on them, so they don’t crack – not when you smile, not when you laugh, but when the ache makes you wince and cry out. I wear gloves, of course. Skin-to-skin is forbidden (skin-to-skin is not, to be honest, what I miss the most. It’s not what I yearn for the most. It even seems ridiculous, in the face of all the rest, a tiny bit of mundane crushed by an infinity of absolute).

I bring you what you ask for. Water. Or ice chips, when water’s not allowed. I don’t talk much; I listen. I listen to each of your words. I indulge your fever dreams. I fluff your pillows and I change your sheets. I push your gurney or your chair when you have to go somewhere, not too fast so you’re not scared, not too slow so you’re not bored. I call the nurses if there’s something you need which I’m not qualified to provide (I watch them push the meds, take the IV out of your arm to change it once in a while. The hole is so old, you once remarked - on a good day - that it has healed around the needle, formed a natural catheter, the ultimate piercing; and you could use it as a vase when you get out of here, like one of those tall thin vases big enough for one flower only, what are they called? Wouldn’t it be pretty, though?).

But I can’t…

When you’re conscious, you’re curled up in your bed, curled tight against the danger that you know surrounds you. You shudder, sometimes. You don’t reply when I speak; you speak, too, but you change the subject. You change it so you can stick to yours. Cling to yours, always. Your subject is your rage, your pain, and the way they interact. What causes what, who causes what, who lies and who mistrusts, who decided to stick you with a needle too large even though you kept telling them you knew the right size to use. You remind me, when you’re very far gone, of those people on the subway who talk to themselves, because they’ve been put through too much, they've been made to carry too much, and finally something gave way.

You remind me of someone broken beyond repair. And I tell myself that even if your body lived, for your mind it’s too late.

And the more impossible it grows the more I want…

The more I can’t, the more I want to…

They repeat it often. That there’s no saving you. That nothing can be done. They even wrote it down in the post-surgical report, after your last operation (I had no reason to read it). _Chances of survival are less than five per cent_. An alexandrine verse. Words are easier to weave around disease, despair and death. Poetry writes itself. The fastidious kind.

That’s why the children’s books and their minimalist phrasing work best to express those things I cannot say. Because it’s too simple. It’s so simple, you know, there shouldn’t be words at all.

There should be gazes. Silences. Minutes, and experiences. A quiet rest, unforced (unmedicated). There should just be life. Reality. Details. There should be seasons, changes in the weather, car sounds, bird sounds, streetlights, nightclubs, roadkill, leaves and pebbles, cobwebs and shells. TV and movies and music, clothes, gossip, pizza on the couch. There should be things. __Tangible__. Touchable.

There shouldn’t be words at all. No words can counteract yours. The poison can’t be the cure. There shouldn’t be any more words.

In the end, we agree.

But words are all I can give you. So I whisper, and you don't hear. I write, and you don't read. I make it so they can't harm you.

**Author's Note:**

> The children's book I referenced is _Toi_ , by Martine Bourre. It's in French and hasn't (to my knowledge) been translated. The original lines are 'Viens dans ma maison'; 'Tu es ma maison'.
> 
> I also made some kind of a vague allusion to a Pasolini quote ("I love life so fiercely, so desperately, that nothing good can come of it: I mean the physical facts of life, the sun, the grass, youth. It's a much more terrible vice than cocaine, it costs me nothing, and there is an endless abundance of it, with no limits: and I devour, devour. How it will end, I don't know."). Not sure it was worth pointing out, but I thought I should give credit where it is due.


End file.
